Cultural Criticism, Literary Theory, Poststructuralism

Leitch argues for the use of poststructural theory in cultural criticism. He maintains that deconstruction remains crucial for a truly critical approach to cultural studies. Literary critics now frequently use sociological, historical, political, and institutional methods of inquiry. This turn toward dis-course and away from literature has led to a resurgence of cultural criticism, a mode of analysis revitalized and reformed by the arrival of theory . Leitch illustrates the weak points of influential predecessors, showing how poststructuralism offers useful advances over reigning modes of critical inquiry. Leitch develops positions on key topics: social formations and cultural critique; authorship and intention; poetic discourse and the social text; literary genre and cultural convention; minority literatures and general poetics ; textual interpretation and assessment; institutional theory and analysis; and Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and poststructuralism. He draws on the work of Barthes, Deleuze, de Man, Derrida, Foucault, Jameson, Kristeva, Lentricchia, Lyotard, Said, and Scholes - whose work he does not hesitate to criticize.